All wisdom begins in wonder, and this delight kindles a desire for truth that leads us on a quest for the really real -- the source of being itself. Hence, the philosophical impulse, albeit often manifested in atheistic and irreverent stumblings in the dark of human ignorance, begins and ultimately ends in theology -- communicating and communing with our origin and goal. We men are rational animals who seek to know. We are agents of truth who want correct answers to questions that we must ask. From the noblest objects of contemplation to the seemingly insignificant everyday trivialities of life, we attempt to unravel perplexing knots. Limited, blind, and distracted, we nevertheless struggle for wisdom. This is our lot, and it is also our glory.

Friday, January 30, A.D. 2015

Like a Girl

Proctor & Gamble is a major company in Cincinnati; the global corporate giant began here and continues to have its headquarters in town. I know many people who work for the company in different capacities. So, for tribal reasons, I support the company and buy its products. However, like most corporations today, Proctor & Gamble is controlled by leftist toadies. I suppose this is the price they must pay to play the game “successfully” in the dominion of this world.

My annoyance with the company on this occasion involves their commercial “Like a Girl” that will air during the Super Bowl according to local media. You may read about the advertisement on the Business Insider: “P&G Asked Kids What It Means to Do Something ‘Like a Girl’ — Here’s What They Said.” In short, the commercial producers bring in adults—who, we are supposed to note, have been enculturated by a patriarchal paradigm—and then ask the adults to perform certain actions like “run like a girl” or “fight like a girl.” The producers then bring in young girls—those blissfully untainted Rousseauian savages not yet corrupted by sexist Western civilization—and ask them to do the same. The girls that they show just perform the actions as well as they can, since they are, after all, girls.

The commercial is supposed to be inspiring and liberating—according to dozens of journalistic reviews that you may read online. However, it is stupid. I see why P&G has produced it—the company has a brilliant marketing team that knows how to manipulate its female customer base with total precision—and they often do this by feeding women’s inherent narcissistic tendencies or affirming their unreflective, unreflected opinions absorbed from Marxist education and media saturation. At times, this form of emotional pandering is unobjectionable, as with P&G’s “Mom” ads during the Olympics. In those, the commercials emphasized maternal self-sacrifice and responsibility for molding the character of the next generation. These are necessary ingredients in the recipe for a strong, healthy society, and they should always be affirmed. In the latest commercial, though, P&G is sitting in for the insanely idiotic womyn studies professor in interpreting the world through her fragile feminist-fried neuroses.

Here is a simple reality check that any thoughtful, unprogrammed person can see. “Like a girl” is an insult for boys and men. It is not an insult for girls or women. It means that a boy should not run like a girl (meaning less quickly), throw like a girl (less quickly or aggressively), or fight like a girl (less aggressively). As such, it is a recognition of natural differences between boys and girls, between men and women, where human males are, by nature, as a sex (and not necessarily for every individual—an unfortunately necessary qualification added due to the abysmal level of education these days), bodily stronger and quicker than human females. This is obvious to anyone not entirely blinded by fanatical feminist ideology. So, “don’t run like a girl” is similar to other insults directed at people who are not living up to the standard appropriate for them, as when one states that someone (an adult) is acting like a child, or when someone yells to a driver (who has vision), “Are you blind?!?!” These comments are not insults for children or the blind. Similarly, our foolish elite-cum-Kindergarten-school-marm get their corsets in a twist when someone says, “Don’t act retarded,” but that is an entirely sensible suggestion for someone who is not retarded. No one blames the retarded for being retarded, but people justly demand that their fellows with normal cognitive functioning not behave like idiots.

It is sad—woefully so—that anyone would need to point this out, given how simple and straightforward it is. And yet, P&G will run this moronic ad, earn praise from the cultural establishment for doing so, and profit from the successful management of its bovine audience.

Furthermore, the commercial and the articles about it note that self-esteem (that hallowed end of our national self-worshipping cult) plummets among girls during puberty. I wonder what those same studies show about boys. Who knows? No one but Christina Hoff Sommers cares about them. However, I have a theory about that self-esteem plummeting. First, as we mature, we learn more. We become (or should become) increasingly aware of our significance, or lack thereof, in and to our larger society. As children, we are often the centers of our universe. This changes when we learn that other people have their own ends and intentions that usually do not involve us. Such is difficult to accept, but it is part of growing up. As such, we should be happy that it happens to boys and girls. Second, we need to know whether this decrease in self-esteem has changed over time, generationally. If it has, then something besides maturity is at work, and I suspect that such is the case. A twelve year old girl today doesn’t live in a world appropriate for her—or for any other human being. Rather, she exists in a world where whores have become the standard model for women. From tween pop stars to department store fashion, the pubescent girl in contemporary America walks in the societal equivalent of a strip joint, writ large and in neon with SLUTS SLUTS SLUTS. This situation is trying for a mature, stable woman; it is cruel and nightmarish for a girl who is just beginning to experience puberty.

The feminist response is to march in Take Back the Night rallies and to sacralize bizarre pagan devotion to rituals like The Vagina Monologues, among other crimes and misdemeanors against civilization. The correct reaction would be to fight against and to reverse the sexual revolution. But “turning back the clock” has never been on their agenda.

Kristor has an excellent exposition of the theistic claim on the Orthosphere: “Where is Now Thy God?” Of course, Kristor always has such on that site, but his latest post is worth your time. I recommend the comment thread, as well.

Franklin Einspruch has a piece in the City Journal about recent art installation controversies at American universities: “When Artists Fear Their Audience.” In short, leftwing artists have been scandalizing contemporary hypersensitive leftwing coeds* on campus, and the coeds have demanded that their schools banish the unsettling artwork from their precious space. And they get their way. Many social commentators like Einspruch find this trend alarming, wondering what happened to the American spirit of freedom, inquiry, and expression that is supposed to inform our institutions of higher learning. What a circus! It almost makes me think warmly of old school lefties who championed the “open society.” Who knew that their Frankfurt School machinations would ultimately result in tyranny? Imagine—a social revolution instigated by Communists has tended toward totalitarianism? Most unexpected, no?

Jonah Goldberg examines “social justice” in the following short video:

Since my first days of undergrad at a Jesuit university, I have had to deal with the “social justice” crowd. It has been trying. My favorite commentary about “social justice” is my friend Andrew’s riff on Voltaire’s comment: “Catholic social justice is neither Catholic, nor social, nor justice.” I appreciate the comment’s humor and its appropriate insistence that “social justice” is not just. For me, the perverse word twisting is the most insulting aspect of “social justice” because it denigrates real justice, one of the cardinal virtues and proper aims of politics. Such makes it the maggoty gerbil corpse cherry on the fecal sundae of leftist lunacy.

“Social justice” ideology results from egalitarianism, which against all evidence holds that all human beings—and all human wills—are equal and have equal worth. If such were true, then any inequality would be an offense against nature (if there were such a thing!) and should be corrected. If such were true, then erasing or minimizing inequality would be just—that is, it would give each his due—since all are due the same. If such were true, any hierarchy or order would be inherently unjust—as those arrangements require specified roles for different people and necessarily introduce power structures. If such were true, power structures would intrinsically be instruments of oppression, as any authority of some over others disrupts equality. If such were true, then truth, beauty, and goodness would be merely self created (and self interested and sadly imposed) values, since real truth, beauty, and goodness set standards by which some opinions are truer than others, some actions are better than others, and some things (and, the horror) faces are more beautiful than others. What a messy mass of inequality mankind would be! It is therefore not a coincidence that the “social justice” crowd as a Venn diagram set largely overlaps those of nihilists, amoralists, the aesthetes of ugliness, and other neer-do-wells.

Curiously, I discovered with cynical delight the acronym “SJW” just last month. I had never seen it before, and then, apparently all of a sudden, I found it everywhere on non-leftist web sites. I had to look it up to find out that it stood for “social justice warrior.” It is a brilliant caricature, as it defines that crowd by pointing out their comical belligerence. Parasitic cheerleaders of parasites (PCP) might be more accurate, but SJW works well, too.

Last year, during the West’s never-ending minute of hate for Russia, Paul Starobin published an interesting essay in The National Interest: “The Eternal Collapse of Russia.” If you do not subsribe to The National Interest, you may download the article from the Internet Archive. Starobin surveys the history of the West’s jaundiced perception of Russia and analyzes contemporary hostility to that nation. The article is worth a read.

On a more pedestrian level, I encountered Russophobia last week when I watched the 2014 film, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit. I like The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games, and Clear and Present Danger, and I wanted to see the latest “Jack Ryan” film adaptation, though this one was not based on a Tom Clancy novel. What I discovered was as ridiculous as craven Hollywood’s last attempt at a Jack Ryan movie, The Sum of All Fears, which I refused to see on principle. For the villain in this latest film is a Russian oligarch who, with the approval of the Kremlin and the active complicity of the Russian Orthodox Church, orchestrates a terrorist attack to blow up Wall Street and destroy the American economy through a consequent mass sell off of American bonds (or something like that).

Consider the history of global terrorism during the last forty years. We have leftist radicals in the 70’s and Timothy McVeigh and Theodore Kaczynski in the 90’s on the American scene, the Japanese cult group Aum Shinrikyo, the I.R.A. in Britain, and Anders Breivik in Norway. There were surely others, but these terror incidents come immediately to mind. Then, consider what I did not mention. Take some time; for the list is quite long. Do you notice a discrepancy in the quantity and, in a perverse occasion for the word, quality of terrorist acts? Indeed. If we were to compare terrorism to leading causes of death in contemporary America, Muhammedanism would be heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, and the flu combined. All other terrorist “causes” combined would be more like shark attacks. But the media love to cover shark attacks. They’re exciting, while heart attacks are boringly trite for the audience.

So, instead of Mohammedan fanatics as the terrorists—so expected and overdone—let’s instead have South African Nazis or Russian Orthodox sleeper cells.

Besides the silly and offensive plot of Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, a major Hollywood film should at least properly research its settings—in this case, about how Orthodox temples look. In one scene, Kenneth Branagh’s character Cherevin, the evil Russian oligarch, enters Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow. He lights a candle and prays for America to bleed—believable so far—I mean, we’ve all done that countless times, you know—and then he exits with a great determination of will to avenge Mother Russia. The interior shown, however, is the Roman Catholic Westminster Cathedral in London. The Byzantine style interior is credibly Orthodox, but the suspended Franciscan style crucifix (San Damiano Cross) in the middle of the nave is a sure sign that it is not. That is an acceptable fault, though. The scene wherein the Russian Orthodox priest activates the sleeper cell in Dearborn, Michigan is not pardonable—at all. We are led to believe that a hyper-modernist church with no iconography, complete with a modern stained glass cross behind the apse-less altar and full of pews, is a Russian Orthodox parish in Michigan. The building is, in fact, the Anglican Church of St John the Evangelist in Hatfield, Hertfordshire. Now, I realize that no Russian Orthodox parish would allow such filming inside their temple, but surely the filmmakers could have contacted a uniate community. Ukrainian uniates would have volunteered their temple for free in order to make the Russian Orthodox Church look bad.

Anyway, I understand the West’s deeply held belief in Orthodox caesaropapism, and I acknowledge that the Soviet controlled Moscow Patriarchate collaborated with the godless Communists. However, the Russian Church Abroad, to which “Saint Uriel the Archangel Russian Orthodox Church” in Dearborn most likely belongs, strongly resisted Communist control. We are, of course, just gullible tools of the Tsar! Perhaps, that is the film’s message—that the post-Soviet Kremlin, with the new Tsarish Putin, now commands the Whites and the Reds to do its bidding. It is funny! The White Church has often been accused of being a pawn of the C.I.A.—the very employer of Jack Ryan. We Russian Orthodox are always someone’s toadies.

Such brings me to my last rant. Ann Barnhardt is fascinating bird, and I wish her well, but in her post about why Ayn Rand became an atheist (“More on Cowardice and Courage”), she writes:

Do you know why Ayn Rand (Alisa Rosenbaum was her real name) became an atheist? Do you know why that clearly intelligent woman became so utterly convinced that there was no God? It is because she witnessed the revolting, repellant cowardice of the Russian Orthodox clergy in Russia during the Bolshevik Revolution. Seeing those men capitulate to evil in order to save their own skins was so abhorrent to behold that young Alisa became convinced that there was no way that the church or the God worshiped in that church could possibly be real or true. It was the observation of cowardice that drove her into atheism, and then into her own sad life of sin and self-centeredness, all in the name of †rational self-interest† and †happiness†.

Such may be true; I do not know enough about Rand’s biography. However, it is very misleading. Barnhardt does not mention the millions of Russian Orthodox martyrs who resisted, fought against, and suffered from the Communists. She does not explain how the Communists gained control of the Moscow Patriarchate. The “revolting, repellant cowardice of the Russian Orthodox clergy” resulted from the liquidation of the Russian episcopate and priesthood. The Communists imprisoned and killed the Church’s bishops, and then the Party repopulated its ranks from the small number remaining—the few who exhibited “revolting, repellant cowardice” in the face of torture and death—with controllable pawns. The Soviets murdered two hundred thousand priests, deacons, and monastics. “Revolting, repellant cowardice”—blasphemy against the Holy Spirit comes to mind.

Yesterday, I stumbled upon Free‌ Range‌ Kids, which is a site dedicated to counter the “helicopter parenting” style that has come to dominate American bourgeois childrearing. Its owner Lenore Skenazy simply promotes what parents universally used to do (e.g. let your children walk to school or take a public bus), and the chattering classes see her as a revolutionary. She has gigs on television shows, publications, and even a speaking circuit. She may have even started a movement. I wish her well, but I want to know why she is necessary. Why does common sense or a fundamental aspect of our inherited way of life need an articulate defender in the court of public opinion? Is such true everywhere in human history, or is this a special characteristic of the contemporary West? And if so, why? When idiots and ideological psychopaths impose their insanity, I expect Americans to push back forcefully and immediately, and that happens at times. But it appears to happen less and less often—and I get the sense that the American masses are becoming more and more complacent, more mandarin, more thoughtlessly obedient to “experts” and social engineers. Perhaps, this is due to successful conditioning, or a breakdown of traditional order, or secularization, or perhaps even the feminization of our civic life. Women tend to be more herd-like in their moral judgments; female suffrage appears to lead by necessity to increased social and political conformity.

Conformity? In our carefree days? Indeed. How funny it is that our latter day libertines become the most draconian bores when their own oxen get gored. “Live and let live”—with the slight modifications listed in three million regulations designed to shackle all life (and to minimize microaggressions, to be sure). Those who preach liberation just want to paint the yoke a new hue (pink, perhaps, or how about rainbow taffy?).

Anyway, I loathe contemporary American pedagogy, with all its toxic, inhuman, suffocating filth. I wish Lenore Skenazy the best in fighting for a “cause” that only requires a champion in a crazy world. And since she has a website and a following, other dutiful mothers might now feel free to follow their instincts and rational judgment rather than the 24/7 media-hyped paranoia. Brave Lenore Skenazy—trailblazing the obvious so that the bovine masses might slowly moo to greener pastures. I say this with genuine admiration for Skenazy coupled with acerbic contempt for human nature—or at least for our sorry, perverted remnant of it.

For a sample of Free‌ Range‌ Kids, check out Skenazy’s New Year’s post, “The Craziest Zero Tolerance Stories of 2014.” It makes one want to grab his pitchfork and a torch and march down to the local board of education. If only Americans had the healthy sensibility of yesteryear’s peasants . . .

As the Christmas season comes to an end for Western Christians and is about to begin for Eastern Christians, I wish everyone a joyous Nativity.

In that spirit, I offer the following Christmas message for this year from the Israeli prime minister:

Isn’t interesting that the nationalist Jewish leader of the Jewish State finds it appropriate to wish Christians in Israel and throughout the world a merry Christmas, but many supposedly Christian politicians in the United States consider such a gesture of good will “divisive” and “alienating”? Of course, the Prime Minister has political reasons for his well wishes. What, I wonder, are the political reasons of the aforementioned American Christians who refuse to celebrate the birth of our Lord publically? Their ways are indeed inscrutable.